Empty pockets or empty cupboards on New Years Eve portend a year of poverty

If the first person to cross the threshold of a house after midnight on New Years is a dark-haird man and he carries a shovel full of coal, then a year of good luck will follow.

Its bad luck to let a fire go out on New Year\’s Eve.

You could ensure yourself good fortune by draining the last dregs from a bottle of drink on New Years!

The Weather: If the wind blows from the south, there will be fine weather and prosperous times in the year ahead. If it comes from the north, it will be a year of bad weather. The wind blowing from the east brings famine and calamities. If the wind blows from the west, the year will witness plentiful supplies of milk and fish but will also see the death of a very important person. If there\’s no wind at all, a joyful and prosperous year may be expected by all.

Loud Noise: Make as much noise as possible at midnight to scare away evil spirits.

Letting the Old Year Out: At midnight, all the doors of a house must be opened to let the old year escape unimpeded. He must leave before the New Year can come in, says popular wisdom, so doors are flung open to assist him in finding his way out.

To dance in the open air, especially round a tree, on New Year\’s Day is declared to ensure luck in love and prosperity and freedom from ill health during the coming twelve months.

Children born on New Year\’s Day bring great fortune and prosperity to all the household.

On New Year\’s Day if, on rising, a girl should look out of her bedroom window and see a man passing by, she may reckon to be married before the year is finished.

Clocks should be wound up immediately the New Year begins in order to endow the house with good fortune, while all daily cleaning and dusting should be completed early in the day of December 31 in order to avoid the danger of sweeping good luck from the house.

Breakage: Avoid breaking things on that first day lest wreckage be part of your year. Also, avoid crying on the first day of the year lest that activity set the tone for the next twelve months

Money: Do not pay back loans or lend money or other precious items on New Year\’s Day. To do so is to guarantee you\’ll be paying out all year.

New Clothes: Wear something new on January 1 to increase the likelihood of your receiving more new garments during the year to follow.

Work: Make sure to do — and be successful at — something related to your work on the first day of the year, even if you don\’t go near your place of employment that day. Limit your activity to a token amount, though, because to engage in a serious work project on that day is very unlucky.

Black-Eyes Peas: A tradition common to the Southern part of the United States says that the eating of black-eyed peas on New Year\’s Day will attract both general good luck and money in particular to the one doing the dining

A person who lives alone might place a lucky item or two in a basket that has a string tied to it, and then place the basket just outside the front door before midnight. After midnight, the lone celebrant hauls in his catch, being careful to bring the item across the doorjamb by pulling the string rather than by reaching out to retrieve it and thus breaking the plane of the threshold.

Nothing Goes Out: Nothing — absolutely nothing, not even garbage — is to leave the house on the first day of the year. If you have presents to deliver on New Year\’s Day, leave them in the car overnight. Don\’t so much as shake out a rug or take the empties to the recycle bin. Some people soften this rule by saying it\’s okay to remove things from the home on New Year\’s Day, provided that something else has been brought in first.

Just as the clock strikes twelve the head of the house should open the door in order to allow the Old Year to pass out and the New Year to come in.

Kissing at midnight: To ensure that those affections and ties will continue throughout the next twelve months. To not do this would be to set the stage for a year of coldness.

Stocking Up: The New Year must not be seen in with bare cupboards, lest that be the way of things for the year. Larders must be topped up and plenty of money must be placed in every wallet in the place to guarantee a prosperous year.

Paying Off Bills: The new year should not be begun with the household in debt, so checks should be written and mailed off prior to January 1st. Likewise, personal debts should be settled before the New Year arrives.

First Footing: The first person to enter your home after the stroke of midnight will influence the year you\’re about to have. Ideally, he should be dark-haired, tall, and good-looking, and it would be even better if he came bearing certain small gifts such as a lump of coal, a silver coin, a bit of bread, a sprig of evergreen, and some salt. Blonde and redhead first footers bring bad luck, and female first footers should be shooed away before they bring disaster down on the household.

First Footing: The first footer should knock and be let in rather than just using a key. After greeting those in the house and dropping off whatever small tokens of luck he has brought with him, he should make his way through the house and leave by a different door than the one through which he entered. No one should leave the premises before the first footer arrives — the first traffic across the threshold must be headed in rather than striking out.

First footers must not be cross-eyed or have flat feet or eyebrows that meet in the middle

Squint-eyed, flat-footed, or red-haired men bring bad luck If they are first-footers, and so does a woman. But a man with a high instep, or one who comes on a horse, is considered particularly lucky.

Have fun. Love Me xxxxxx

P.S. I was going to post a photo of me from New Years Eve 1986 but it was far too scary. Actually I have changed my mind, I will post it, after all it is exactly 20 years ago and I still have that dress and those shoes. But Oh the Horror!!!!

Firstly, I must say a big thank you to the pussycats who did such a wonderful job writing my blog over the last few days and they are so happy that you all liked it so much. Maybe you will hear their adventures again in the near future.

Secondly, I must say a big hello to all my new friends. There are some real stunners among them \”mwah\” to you.

Thirdly, I must say a bigger hello and I love you to all my older friends who I feel I have neglected a bit and I am so sorry but I have been so busy with all my emails over the last two weeks or so, since Yahoo put me on their interesting pages.

Anyway I had a very lovely xmas with friends and neighbours, as most of you know I don\’t really have any family left to speak of or that\’s speaking to me I should say. So needless to say I didn\’t hear from them over xmas and I didn\’t expect to either.

We are all feeling another year slipping away, and being a January baby I am about to suffer another birthday so am probably feeling it more right now.

In fact in less than a week, next thursday on the 4th of January I will be 44. OMG, I hear you say 44? Yes I say 44.

And this is probably one of the reasons New Year doesn\’t really do it for me, because of my birthday being 4 days later, everyone is always partied out or on holiday, so I rarely am able to have a real celebration on my birthday (damn New Year).

Anyway who really wants to celebrate 44? I am not so sure I do. Men my age are already trading women like me in for newer sleeker models. So how do I compete with that? Truth is I don\’t even try to compete with that. If men don\’t like me for who I am then they can go jump for all I care.

Roll on 44. Can\’t hold it back now!

Love Me xxxxx

P.S. Here is a poem I wrote a while ago and I would like all my new friends to read it for the New Year…At the End of the Day…

When I get locked out at night because I love the nightlife, I love to boogie, I knock on the front door at 2am to get back inside the house. My mum thinks that is so clever.

Then what does ol\’ Raggedybutt do? Copies me! It was my idea in the first place.

Why mum didn\’t use my name as her blog I will never know. I think Chocolate Truffles (which is my full name btw) would have been a lot more dignified and not only that but she wouldn\’t have a trillion people a day asking her if she really has a fluffybutt.

When mum goes next door to visit her neighbour I go too, they all think it is so cute. Even the old Siamese Suki that lives there thinks its cute. Well I am not really sure about that but she doesn\’t seem to mind. She is very old, around sixteen I think so we don\’t see her much unless we go for a visit. She is like a statue, so delicate and beautiful.

If mum ever has a visitor I am always very friendly, Raggedybutt on the other hand is so snobby, she hardly ever talks to visitors but seems to like the ones with British accents! Go figure.

Anyway I am going to curl up on the big velvet lounge now and have a well earned nap. As I have been out most of the night and am pooped.

But my mother (the lady with the black hair) does not have a fluffy butt. Unless she decides to get around in furry pants. haha (yeah that\’s a cat joke)

I don\’t like my step sister Truffles. She is a little trouble maker and sometimes I think mum loves her more than me cause she is just too darn cute.

But I am a beautiful princess.

Last night I had special sardines for Xmas Eve dinner. And maybe today I might get another special treat cause I really love my food.

When mum eats anything I have to have some just to try it, I especially like ice cream, yoghurt, corn chips, rice crackers, muffins and vanilla chupachups. But mum won\’t let me have these treats often because she wants me to have a nice figure.

Not that there is really any point in that. I am fixed and old, and its not like there are any cute boy cats around here, except for Harvey the white oriental and he just annoys the hell out of me, with his boyish charm and the cute way he rolls around on the ground and tries to suck up to me. Yeah I know his game, be all lovey dovey and then bite me. Well, I just will bite him first. Haha.

And what the hell is up with those possums on the roof and those bush turkeys in the yard, don\’t they know I own this place. Geez bunch of freeloaders. I couldn\’t be bothered chasing them away though, cause they will just come back anyway.

I think I will go and lie in the sun now, cause I am very sleepy. Then I might get up and chase those things that mum can\’t see for a while.

I hope that everyone has happy holidays and especially looks after their fur family over xmas and please don\’t abandon those little animals that you get for xmas, they need love too.

But what we do have is lunch outdoors and bbq\’s, swimming in the pool and going to the beach. And my favourite thing about Xmas here in Oz is the abundance of fresh fruit.

Every Xmas we have cherries, apricots, peaches, plums, nectarines and two of my favourites mangos and lychees. Mmmmm there is not much that is better than eating cold mangos and lychees (oh I love those little suckers), on a hot day then going for a dip in the pool.

Some people might say its not really Xmas without snow and turkey and cranberries.

And one day I would love to experience a white Xmas, and I am sure that would be truly beautiful.

But until then I will stick with my lovely fruit, and sunshine.

I hope you all have a magical Xmas and that all your New Years dreams come true!

When my mother first immigrated to Australia with her first husband in 1952 they established a toy factory making soft toys. They made everything from teddy bears to poodles.

She imported her fabric from Germany from the same factory that made the mohair fabric that the famous Steiff teddy bears were made from. She designed all the patterns for the toys and they made a huge range of breeds of dogs as well as having the rights back then to make Noddy, Blinky Bill and Snuggle Pot and Cuddle Pie.

Her first husband sadly died of cancer in 1958.

In 1959 she met my father and they continued on with the toy factory for a while but as my father was a pastry cook they decided to open a cake shop.

I still have today boxes of fabric, glass animal eyes, faces and some full toys like a family of teddies and a panda from their 1950’s factory.

So above is a photo of my mum (in the polka dots) and my dad, in the toy factory.

Next to that is a photo of rubber and plastic faces, I have a box about the size of two shoeboxes full of these faces and still don’t really know what to do with them, but they always were fascinating to me as a child.

Its nice to have them, even though I wasn’t born when mum and dad had the toy factory, mum still made toys for us and friends, and the memory of her cutting the fur, sitting at the machine and helping her stuff the toys as a child is something I remember with unexplainable happiness.

The rules are simple. If you are tagged you have to post a blog listing six weird things about yourself. You then tag six other people. Post a comment saying that they are tagged and to read your blog for instructions.

Six Weird Things About Me…

1. This morning I walked around our offices giving out xmas chocolates with horns on my head, when questioned about it I told them I was the horny xmas elf.

2. Sometimes I like to sleep on my lounge to be closer to my cat Truffles.

3. I once had an anxiety attack on a airplane so they put me in Business Class.